Project Tiger Blade – 虎斷 Hu Duan

My first project of 2025 came from a relatively niche source material.

The Inspiration

When Phil and I visited Hong Kong in October, we had a blast roaming through Sino Centre in Mong Kok. While he shopped all over the place for Pokemon cards, I mainly lingered around the two used manhua book stores. It was a dream come true to see physical copies of all these goodies that I yearned from afar back in high school and college. I filled my compact backpack with as much souvenir as I was able to.

Among my loot was the miniature Ba Dao 霸刀, the black saber in the red box, from the manhua series of the same name. This replica came with a serial number and a certificate of authenticity, indicating that it was minted in 1998. What a vintage treasure!

As we were about to leave, I realized that I had missed some spots on the store’s crammed shelves. In another identical red box was Hu Duan 虎斷, the other protagonist’s saber in the Ba Dao manhua. I hesitated and walked away without acting on it. For the remainder of the trip, Phil and I joked about returning to Sino Centre to spend more money. Even after leaving Hong Kong, we continued talking about that otaku heaven. My regret for not having also picked up Hu Duan grew stronger each time this topic crossed my mind.

I looked online for a mail-order remedy for my mistake. The search term yielded few results; after all, we’re talking about a niche merch from three decades ago. A couple people were selling the exact thing on an auction site, but I was unable to place a bid without being an HK resident. Frustration grew with regret… all for a little thing that I hadn’t realized existed until recently.

And it hit me… oh yeah, I might as well just make it myself.

The Source Material

Ba Dao 霸刀 is one of the most popular titles in Hong Kong’s manhua history. The story is too incoherent for my liking, but its colorful characters and weapons will remain etched in my mind for a long time.

Fei Jing 飛驚, the primary* protagonist, is a fearless teenager on his journey to become the world’s best saber fighter. Some time after his starter blade got destroyed by a formidable enemy, he came across a funky-shaped half saber and made it his own. It had previously been a powerful saber but got sliced in half in a dual. The shortened weapon happened to suit Fei Jing’s fighting style well. He named it Hu Duan 虎斷, meaning “broken tiger”.

(* Fei Jing was set up to be the story’s primary protagonist, but the author seemed to have gotten bored or hit a wall and started focusing excessively on Dao Wu Di 刀無敵, Fei Jiing’s role model and a flat character by design with limited development arc)

The Assembly

Compared to most of my cardboard blacksmithing projects, this one was rather easy: compact in size and lots of straight lines. Layering plastic gift cards and corrugated cardboard had become my standard practice by now, so I was able to complete the whole thing in two weeks. The tiger stripes / claw marks on the back of the blade were the main challenge, but they were also fun to sculpt.

Computer-Aided Design

This project was able to progress quickly because, instead of measuring and sketching out every component, I just printed out the shape and used it for cutting. While this approach burned through a ton of printer paper, it saved a lot of time and ensured consistency between every layer.

Perhaps I could learn CAD at some point but, for now, what I mean by computer-aided was drawing shapes in Power Point…